How to Edit Digital Photos on Your iPad

How to make any photo look its best

Whatever tool you use to edit your photos (we’re using Luminance here), the majority of the options you’ll need will be exactly the same and should work in the same basic way. On top of those, you’ll usually find one-click gimmick options, and a few that may come in handy for specific images, but those are usually better tried a few times and then never touched again. The ones to focus on are the less exciting options, especially brightness and color saturation. Follow these six steps in order and even a picture that seems ruined can come alive under your fingers.

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How to Polish Your Pictures on the iPad

Your photo’s exposure is the result of shutter speed, aperture and ISO setting, and hopefully it’s perfect. If it’s not, use this slider – it’s amazing how much data can be hidden in both dark and blown out bits of the image.

Many photos have a color cast. White Balance compensates for that with defaults such as Shade or Flash, or a slider to control temperature or tint. You can also tap part of your image that you know is white.

If you have a choice of these two adjustments, Vibrance is better on images with skin tones, primarily boosting lower-saturation colors. If not, don’t worry: the effect of Saturation is more or less the same.

Now it’s time to try the fun options. Be careful, though – the more gimmicky they are, the worse they’ll look in a year or so. Try to stick to simple vignettes, blurs and the like, unless you have a really good use for another effect.

Two final edits are technically possible on the iPad, but are usually absent – sharpening and noise reduction. Noise reduction is best saved for a tool such as Noise Ninja, and sharpening for when you can target the effect.